


Hold My Head Up to the Midnight Sun

by pukeandcry



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Big Bang Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:46:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Nick meets Harry is the night Harry’s kicked out of his flat. </p><p>This is the one where Nick is rich and aimless, and Harry is broke and aimless, and there's an extended vacation (for the One Direction Big Bang challenge).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold My Head Up to the Midnight Sun

**Author's Note:**

> this is my submission for [1d_bigbang](http://1d-bigbang.livejournal.com/)! the amazing [thediamondskies](http://thediamondskies.livejournal.com/) has made a beautiful mix and artwork to go along with it that you can find [here](http://thediamondskies.livejournal.com/8306.html) that is so wonderful and perfect, so please do check it out if you get a moment!

The first time Nick meets Harry is the night Harry’s kicked out of his flat. Nick’s coming back from dinner and drinks with Pix and some others (which was really more drinks and drinks than anything, and also some dancing and possibly some pills, he doesn’t fully remember, but that’s normal), and when he turns the corner to stop in the 24-hour market for a bottle of awful wine and maybe some painkillers, he walks straight into a boy who’s attacking a door.

The boy (who Nick doesn’t know is Harry, not yet), is kicking and cursing as he tries to yank open the narrow door to a set of stairs, long limbs flailing and tensing to pound on the bars, his keys abandoned on the pavement, and he’s giving the door one last furious kick with his worn-out boots when Nick barrels into him.

“Alright, mate?” Nick asks once he catches his breath. They’re both on their arses, and Nick’s landed on top of the boy’s keys.

“Bastard changed the locks,” the boy mutters furiously. He stills enough that Nick finally gets a look at him, and once he does, he doesn’t quite know how to understand what he’s looking at. This boy is all arms and legs and his curls are matted and tangled, his shirt torn a bit around the neck, but his trousers are black and tight and perfect. He can’t be more than eighteen, but he looks too angry for how young he must be. Nick’s not sure if he wants to back away slowly so not to incite his anger, or reach out and tousle his hair.

“Bad luck,” Nick says, pulling the keys out from under his arse and holding them out to the boy. “Erm, do you -- need these, then?”

If Nick had been just a little drunker, or if he knew this boy’s name, or felt like he had a slightly better handle on this situation, he would have laughed out loud at the expression on the boy’s face at that -- there’s still that strange fury, the one that Nick can’t tell if it’s kittenish and endearing or actually a bit dangerous, but it’s clearly fighting the boy’s instinct to be polite. As a result, he’s quiet for a moment, like he’s trying to decide whether to tell Nick to fuck off or offer him a hand and help him up.

“S’pose,” he finally settles on, reaching out to take the ring of keys from Nick. He doesn’t move to get up after that, just pulls his knees up to his chest and sighs, so Nick doesn’t either.

“You live here?” Nick asks, pointing vaguely towards the building. There’s a cramped little takeaway curry place that’s closed for the night and a shop selling newspapers next to it, and above them there’s clearly a row of flats, the ones the boy had been trying to get into.

“Used to, apparently,” the boy says, pulling another dark face as he glares up at the dark window above the shops. “Seems my landlord finally booted me.” He laughs once, a single _hmph_ that echoes a little in the mostly-empty street. “The twat threatened it enough, didn’t think he’d actually follow through.”

“Sorry,” Nick says, surprised to find he means it. No one should have to be out on the street at half two, not really, but especially not this boy -- he doesn’t know why it’s true, but it is.

The boy just frowns, but he doesn’t look so angry anymore, just curious, and a strange smile curls on his lips. “Really? Why?”

“Erm,” Nick says, suddenly very aware of the fact that he’s sitting on the pavement with a stranger, and how that’s probably not a very normal thing to be doing on a Tuesday night. “Because that sounds like shite?”

The boy is still just peering at him, and Nick can tell he’s about to do that awful thing where he starts to talk crap just to fill an awkward silence. “And, like, I’ve run into you and now you’re on the pavement, which probably isn’t making you feel any better about being evicted, so, like. Sorry in a general way, for your flat being locked up, and also in a more personally responsible way, for possibly breaking one of your limbs.”

He sounds like a maniac, he knows, but the boy smiles anyway.

“Think my limbs are all fine, but, um. Thanks?”

“Yeah, well.” Nick shrugs, trying to seem casual, which, turns out, is hard to do when your head’s swimming slightly with leftover gin and pills and you’re crouched on the ground beside a fit stranger.

“Just--” the boy starts, like he wants to carry on, even though Nick’s not sure what else this line of conversation could develop into, but then he stops. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” He presses his hands against the pavement and unfolds his legs, standing up to his full height and brushing his palms off on his very tight trousers. Nick moves to follow him, and the boy holds out a hand and yanks him up, the strange smile still pulling his mouth sideways. “Sorry to have held you up, anyway, m’sure you’ve got places to be.”

“Not really,” Nick says, without meaning to and louder than the setting warrants. “Er, I mean." He adjusts his volume. "Just, I was heading home? But now I think I fancy a kebab.” Nick hadn’t realized it but finds it’s true anyway, suddenly hungry.

The boy keeps looking at him, except now his arms are folded over his chest, bunching up his thin black shirt.

He’s not sure why, but Nick thinks he really doesn’t want to go home yet, so even though this boy is strange and young and possibly dangerous, his mouth is saying “You could come along, if you want? While you figure out how to get into your flat,” before his brain can have a say in the matter.

And a normal person would probably say no, would immediately see the flaws in accompanying a stranger who’s clearly somewhat pissed and whose quiff is drooping over his eyes in a deranged way to a second location, but as it turns out, Harry’s not normal, which is still something Nick doesn’t know yet, but he’s got a feeling.

“You know what? Yeah. Haven’t got a better idea.”

“Brilliant,” Nick says, shuffling around to the boy’s side as they start to sway down the block to the main street, both of them just a bit unsteady.

“Who’re you?” the boy asks as they cross beneath a street lamp that lights up the planes of his face.

“Nick. Hi.”

The boy nods. “‘M Harry.”

So that’s how Nick meets Harry.

-

It turns out the kebab place that Nick’s thinking of is closed, because it’s nearly three by the time they find it, but Harry says he knows another place -- which turns out to be a man with a cart, actually, but Nick’s not complaining, because the food stops his head swimming so much, and they sit back down on a different curb to eat as a few straggling drunks pass by.

“D’you always hang about with strangers you run into on the street?” Harry asks.

“Almost exclusively, yeah,” Nick says. “Keeps it interesting.”

Harry laughs, for real this time, deep and lazy, and Nick hopes it’s just the last of the pills fizzing through his system that’s making his stomach twist a little helplessly at the sound, because it would be enormously embarrassing if it’s not.

“You’ve got somewhere to go tonight, then?” Nick asks.

Harry shrugs. “Dunno. Few mates I could try, but.” He doesn’t finish the sentence.

And maybe it’s because Nick is still a bit fucked up, and because suddenly the thought of going home to drink cheap wine alone while trying not to be sick as all the crap in his bloodstream runs its course seems much more depressing than it had half an hour ago. Or possibly it’s because Harry looks very young, all of a sudden. But either way, he knows what his mouth is about to say, and exactly why he shouldn’t, but he does anyway.

“You could, erm. Come to mine?”

Harry frowns at him, and the suspicious expression looks too well practiced, which makes Nick feel like a complete shit. “Not, I mean -- not in a _weird_ way,” he clarifies hastily. “Just, like, I’ve got an extra room, and all.” He picks at the rest of his kebab, letting pieces of it fall into the gutter. One mangy pigeon is inching closer, and he kicks out his foot at it, startling it away.

“But you don’t know me.”

Nick shrugs. It’s a fair point, and he doesn’t really have a good answer for it, so he just tenses his shoulders instead.

“Nice of you to offer, though.” Harry says sympathetically.

“‘S’nothing. You sure you’ll be alright?” Nick asks, because it really does bother him to think about Harry wandering around in the streets all night, or kipping in a bus shelter or something.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Harry assures him. “My mate Louis will probably be in, anyway, I can likely go to his, and if not I’ll just go to work early.”

Nick frowns. “Alright. If you say so, I s’pose.”

Harry rises from the pavement and shakes out his hair. “Thanks for the company. And the kebab. See you around, maybe?” he asks.

“Yeah, alright,” Nick agrees. “G’luck with everything.”

“Thanks, mate,” Harry says, and then he’s gone around the corner.

Nick figures that’s it, and throws the remains of his food in a bin before stretching his arms behind his back and slowly starting in the direction home. He tries not to feel disappointed that some bloke he doesn’t even know is leaving him alone on a curb with the remains of a kebab, and mostly succeeds. Sadder things have happened to him, anyway.

-

Harry doesn’t turn up again until a month later, when Nick stumbles into a pub at quarter to four on a Thursday afternoon. He’s alone, and he’s already pissed from doing shots on Henry’s fire escape with one of his rotating cast of waifish models, because they hadn’t had anything else to do. But then Henry and his model had fucked off, and Nick had wanted to keep drinking, except he didn’t want to talk to anyone anymore, so he’d walked aimlessly for several blocks until he found a pub he didn’t recognize.

Harry’s in it, slumped in a booth near the back with his head on his arm, idly scrolling on his mobile with his other hand.

“Harry,” he says, nudging the edge of the table with his hip. Harry’s head tilts up, although he doesn’t lift it, and he smiles.

“Nick, hey,” he responds slowly. “Wondered if I’d see you around.”

The way he says it, all gradual but easy like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like he’s been waiting for Nick for ages, makes something unfamiliar flutter somewhere inside of him. He knows he’s been drinking, but this is something else, something he doesn’t quite know yet. All he knows is that when he sits down across from Harry in the ratty booth and says “Can I buy you a drink, then?” it comes out easily, and when Harry says yes, he thinks that if he believed in fate, this might be close to it.

-

That’s the second time, and when Nick stands to leave hours later because the sun’s starting to set and he’s suddenly exhausted from drinking all day, he programs his number into Harry’s mobile, forcing Harry to do the same. “Bit like the universe is trying to shove us together, innit?” he’d said, which sounded like a line but honestly wasn’t, so he told Harry as much. “‘S’not a line, either, it’s just funny, yeah?”

Harry had laughed, and taken the last pull from his whiskey coke, nodding. “Yeah, I reckon so. Can’t say no to the universe.”

“Call me next week and we’ll get pissed together properly, not just on accident,” Nick instructs, feeling more sure than he must look, swaying as he rises up. His knees crack and he hopes Harry hasn’t heard it -- he can’t say why but he doesn’t want to look like he’s falling apart quite so literally. It’s not a good look. He’d rather look confident and sure, a bit dashing and mysterious, which is true always, but especially now, and two knees that both crack when it gets rainy doesn’t help that.

“I work a lot,” Harry says, but it doesn’t sound like he’s declining.

“Well I’m free a lot, so whenever.”

“Alright,” Harry agrees. He stretches his arm out across the table again, putting his head back down on it in the exact position he was when Nick found him earlier.

-

Harry does call him, and Nick’s not sure if it surprises him or not. But either way Harry agrees to go out and get pissed with him at another pub the next week, and then to get fish and chips two days later, and after that it just sort of keeps happening -- Harry calls him, or Nick texts Harry, and they meet up and drink lager and eat takeaway and watch awful tv.

Harry tells him how he’s been staying with friends, flitting back and forth between several of them because none of them can keep him for very long, and how he had to have his mate Zayn threaten to rough up his old landlord to get him to let Harry in to get his things.

“‘S’funny if you know Zayn, cos he’s a proper coward, never been in a fight in his life, but he’s got tattoos and a leather jacket so I figured he at least looked scary,” Harry tells him.

“Scarier than you, even?” Nick asks, raising an eyebrow. “After what you did to that poor man’s door when he chucked you?”

Harry laughs and shrugs at the same time at that, and Nick memorizes the motion without meaning to, deciding he likes the way Harry pulls it off so effortlessly.

“Got the job done. Except now I’ve got all my stuff piled in Zayn’s kitchen, which I don’t think he’s too happy about.”

“You can always come ‘round mine, y’know,” Nick offers for the second time. It’s less stupid this time, less stupid than when he’d offered the first night they met, because Harry’s not a stranger anymore, Nick knows his first name _and_ his last, and how he takes his tea and that it’s very unlikely he’s secretly a murderer, but he still expects Harry to turn him down, because that’s what Harry does.

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry says, which is how he says no. But that night he falls asleep with his legs draped over Nick’s armchair, and Nick has to force himself not to look too pleased with it all when he wakes up in the morning and finds Harry still there.

Harry works loads, and Nick doesn’t, because there’s no need, and it’s easier for him that way. Nick’s had jobs before, obviously, but not proper sorts, not something he’d went out and found and applied for and worried over. They’re all pointless little stints that come from connections, a business partner of an acquaintance of a relative or some nonsense like that, and they never turn out to be actual _work_ , just sitting about occupying space in some glassy office building or art gallery and getting a paycheck for it. The whole thing makes Nick sick to his stomach, especially when he thinks about how bloated his own bank account already is with trust funds and artfully arranged investments that he couldn’t decipher with an answer key, so eventually he stops bothering with the whole thing. It’s not like anyone expects anything else of him, anyway.

Nick’s not sure what it is Harry does -- he’d said something about a restaurant, something about washing dishes, but before that he’d also said something about answering phones, so he’s not sure. It seems likely that he has more than one job, but Nick can’t riddle out exactly how many more. Harry seems reluctant to tell Nick too much about anything all at once, preferring to talk in riddles and torn-up little pieces of half-information, and Nick has to paste it together to figure out that Harry’s nineteen, that he dropped out of uni, that he sends money home to his mum and sister each month, and likes working with animals and food, but not children or academics.

It gets to the point where he sees Harry most days, even gets him to kip on his sofa sort of frequently, even though it drives Nick mad when he’s got a perfectly good guest bedroom that Harry adamantly refuses to see, let alone sleep in. But since Harry’s still pinballing between various mates’ flats when he’s not at Nick’s, he counts it as a small victory when he can goad Harry into at least staying in the lounge for the night.

Nick had initially wondered if maybe Harry might be the volatile sort, who gets pissed and starts fights and comes home with scrapes and bruises that have interesting stories behind them -- Nick’s always vaguely admired those sorts, since he's nothing like it -- but after the first time they meet, Nick doesn’t see Harry get cross or angry or kick any more doors. It’s not that Harry’s exactly level headed, necessarily, because he’s an open book, everything that pleases him or upsets him showing up on his face like he can’t stop it from happening. But if there’s any of that fury still left inside Harry, Nick thinks he must keep it mostly turned inward, because he doesn’t see it again until Harry loses both his jobs in the same day.

Harry’s perched on the stairs to Nick’s flat when he wanders home one morning after crashing at Pixie’s, and Nick can tell he’s either pissed or been up all night, possibly both. “Haz,” he says, reaching down to help Harry stand. Harry doesn’t sway -- not pissed, then -- but he does peer up at Nick with bleary red eyes that are hard and angry. “What’s going on? You been here long?”

Harry shrugs, but he’s scowling furiously. Nick can feel the unhappiness rolling off him like a fog.

“Come inside?” Nick asks, unlocking the door. “You can smash something, if you like. A dinner plate, maybe, or a few teacups?” Harry looks restless and unhappy, like he could stand to break something, and Nick knows that feeling too well.

Harry doesn’t laugh, but he follows Nick into his flat, setting down heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and staring furiously at the wall.

Nick makes them coffee, because it’s quite early, and he’s not actually sure he’s suited to dealing with whatever’s upsetting Harry, unless Harry wants to binge drink about it and then repress however it is he’s feeling. While the coffee brews, Nick rummages through his cupboards until he finally finds a stack of china dessert plates that he’s never used and sets them in front of Harry, who’s still silent and scowling.

“Want to go break these?” Nick offers, and Harry keeps staring, back and forth between the plates and Nick.

“Your dishes are too nice to smash,” he finally says.

Nick waves his hands dismissively. “They’re not, I promise.” He gathers up an armful, and two mugs of coffee, before gesturing with his head for Harry to follow him. “C’mon.”

He leads them to the alley around back, and without waiting to see if Harry will follow suit, smashes one of the small plates on the pavement near the rubbish bin.

“It’ll make you feel better,” Nick promises. “And it’s either this or I have to make you _talk_ about it, so.” He hands a plate to Harry, who turns it over in his hands softly before hurling it down at his feet. It shatters spectacularly, the crash echoing on the brick walls surrounding them.

Nick raises his eyebrows and hands more to Harry, who only hesitates a moment before smashing them all in a row, his long limbs moving furiously as he hurls them about. When all twelve are done Harry is breathing heavy, but the manic anger seems to have left him, because now he just looks drained. He runs his hands through his hair and sighs.

“Lost my jobs,” he finally says.

Nick’s heart sinks sympathetically -- he doesn’t know what the jobs are, but he knows Harry depends on them, barely scrapes by as it is, so this is bad news.

Harry pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his jacket. Nick has only seen Harry smoke a handful of times, but this probably calls for it, and he accepts one when Harry offers them to him. Harry slides down the wall to sit on the concrete, his knees bent up at a sharp angle, and Nick follows, even though the ground of alley is foul.

“Knew I was about to get the boot from the place I was answering phones, but,” Harry starts, taking a long pause to exhale a column of smoke. “They didn’t have the money for me, but, like. Thought I’d be okay at the restaurant, pick up some extra hours until I found something else.”

“And then?” Nick asks.

“It’s fucking _shit_ ,” Harry says, the anger creeping back into his voice. “This new manager’s had it out for me since he started, and I dunno _why_ , but. Apparently he said I’ve been stealing, but I _haven’t_. I wouldn’t.” Harry sounds dangerous and agonizing, and even though Nick’s never been in a fight before he wants to go find this absolute twat of a manager and punch his teeth in, because Harry really _wouldn’t_ , wouldn’t ever -- Nick hasn’t even known Harry for very long, all things considered, but he knows that about him with certainty.

“M’sorry, mate,” he says, flicking at his cigarette absently. “You know if there’s anything you need...” He trails of.

“Yeah, mate, thanks,” Harry says, smiling wanly. He stays silent as he smokes the rest of his cigarette, and throws the butt into the gutter before pushing himself off the ground and offering his hand to Nick. “C’mon. Wanna get pissed.”

Nick isn’t even tempted to point out that it’s ten in the morning, because Harry looks small and young, curling into the collar of his jacket even though it’s warm out. If Harry wants to get pissed, they’ll get pissed, and fast.

-

By the afternoon they’ve gone through two bottles of wine and more of Harry’s strange vodka concoctions than Nick cares to count. They’re sprawled out loosely over Nick’s lounge furniture, Harry’s head dangled over the side of the sofa so his hair flops. There’s a sunbeam coming through the window falling right between Harry’s eyes, and Nick tries not to smile at the way it lights Harry up.

“D’you ever feel like the universe is purposefully trying to fuck you over?” Harry asks. It makes Nick’s stomach twist, but there’s a smile on Harry’s mouth, so maybe it’s not meant to be too sad.

“Plenty of the time, yeah,” he agrees. It’s actually true, loathe though he is to admit it, because it all feels a bit too sad little rich girl for his tastes.

“Gotta move my shit out of Zayn’s place, too,” Harry continues. “His girlfriend is moving in and they need the space, apparently.” He sighs. “It’d just be nice to disappear from it all for a bit, y’know?”

Nick does know, in fact.

He’s starting to get an idea -- it’s hazy, because he’s drunk, but it’s there, twisting around. Nick shoves himself upright, hoping to be able to clear his head if he sits up properly.

“Is there anything really keeping you here?” Nick asks. He knows how it sounds, but he doesn’t mean it like that -- he’s actually curious. The bits he knows about Harry’s personal life are incomplete, but he knows enough to imagine how it must feel to be so unmoored and free-floating -- doesn’t need to imagine it at all, in fact.

“Haven’t got a job or a flat, so,” Harry says wryly. His eyes are starting to flutter sleepily, so Nick nudges him with his toe, because this is important.

“Really, though.”

“No,” Harry says simply.

“So let’s go,” Nick says, like it’s just that easy -- because it is.

“Yeah, alright,” Harry laughs. “Let’s go.”

“No, I mean it,” Nick continues. “We could just, like. Leave. Go to the continent. Bugger off. Why not?”

“Because... people don’t do that?” Harry supplies, furrowing his eyebrows. “People don’t just bugger off to Europe when things turn crap.”

“We could, though,” Nick presses.

“Sure, alright,” Harry agrees. Nick’s pretty sure he’s just humoring him, but Nick means it, suddenly wants nothing more than to scoop Harry up and take him somewhere where none of _this_ weighs him down quite so much.

“Harry,” he says, trying to make his words slow and sure. “I’m being serious. There’s not much for either of us here right now, yeah?”

Harry nods slowly, looking suspicious as he does so.

“Please,” Nick says, and that’s what does it, that’s what makes Harry’s face go all soft -- that’s what gets Harry to say “Yeah, alright, then,” and sound like he means it as well.

-

“Where’re we going first, then?” Nick asks the next morning. They’re slumped over the table picking at the omelets Harry’s made them, both hungover and tired, and Nick still feels like smiling despite all that.

It’s up to Harry, obviously, because it always has been, when he thinks about it. Wherever Harry wants to go, they’ll go there.

Harry smiles, twisting his mug of tea around in his hands twice. “Paris, I think,” he says slowly.

Nick buys them train tickets to Paris that night, and it’s that easy.

-

Except it’s not actually that easy, though, because it turns out Harry’s got a _thing_ about Nick’s money. He agrees to let Nick buy their train tickets to Paris, but suddenly he gets it in his head that Nick’s not allowed to spend any amount of money on the trip that Harry deems “extravagant.”

“Mate, that’s the whole point, though,” Nick tries to protest. “We’re trying to forget about your money problems and I’ve got too much of it. It’s the clear solution, yeah?”

“S’not fair, though,” Harry says with a final shrug as he throws things in his bag, and that’s all he’ll say on the matter -- he won’t go unless they do it on his terms, apparently, and Nick knows him well enough by now to know that testing Harry’s stubbornness is not a game he wants to play.

“Fine,” he says, already plotting ways to bend Harry’s rule -- he’s fairly sure he can, he’s not unused to scheming to get his way.

-

Harry looks gobsmacked the next day when they step off the train in Paris, his eyes darting back and forth as they walk through the streets like he’s trying to see everything at once before it disappears.

“I suppose I never asked,” Nick says. “Have you ever been here?”

Harry shakes his head. “There was a school trip once, in year 11, but we couldn’t afford it, so...” He trails off, looking around him with an awestruck expression on his face. “Not like London, is it?”

Nick shrugs.

“Well, then, what first? The typical stuff, Eiffel Tower and boring dusty churches and all that?”

Harry’s still looking around like his head is on a swivel, trying to gaze at everything at once, but he finally holds still long enough to answer. “Nah. Like, later, yeah, but not yet.” He shifts his bag on his shoulder. “Let’s find the hostel, and then you can take me wherever. Just, like, somewhere interesting.”

Nick sighs heavily. “And you’re _sure_ I can’t convince you that we should stay in an actual hotel and not some dirty hovel where we’ll almost certainly be murdered in our sleep?” Harry had spent the train ride finding hostels on Nick’s mobile and summarily ruling them out if they were too expensive, firmly refusing to listen to any of Nick’s suggestions for real, proper hotel rooms.

Harry shakes his head firmly, his curls flying on the wind.

“Fine.” Nick hates to admit it, but he thinks he’s lost this one.

When they eventually find the hostel, it’s tucked off some narrow alley, and the outside is as filthy as Nick had imagined it would be, so he refuses to go inside, instead leaning on the graffitied brick wall out front while Harry stows their bags in their room. He’d at least relented enough to let Nick reserve one of the private rooms instead of the dorm-type barracks. It’s obviously not Nick’s first choice -- he’s positive he could get them one of the best rooms at something posh and trendy with no more than two well-placed phone calls -- but it’s still better than listening to some drunk uni student on summer holiday be sick in the bunk next to them all night in a shared room.

Harry finally reappears and shoves his sunglasses up his face so they push his hair back, and grins at Nick, crossing his legs to lean next to him.

“Where’re we going, then?”

Nick thinks for a moment. “How do you feel about bones?”

“Um -- like, whose bones?”

“Dead people’s, obviously.”

Harry squinches up his face.

“Just, I was thinking, there’re the catacombs, like where they buried the people during the Plague? I think you can go down and take tours and all that, so. Fancy seeing them?”

“Do I fancy seeing some bones,” Harry repeats slowly.

Nick shrugs. “Yeah. S’interesting, don’t you think? Rot and ruin, y’know, all these sad old things just slowly turning to dust beneath the city.”

Harry makes a face. “That’s grim, mate.”

Nick shrugs in response. “Man’s got to have hobbies.”

“Mm. And yours are death tunnels.”

“People still die down there, did you know? They break in and get all turned around, their lamps go off and then they can’t find their way out again.”

Harry pulls a face, sticking out his tongue and frowning. “Is that supposed to convince me?”

Nick shrugs. “You said you wanted to go somewhere interesting.” Harry looks like he’s considering it, now.

“I suppose it might be, erm. Interesting?”

“Tours are free,” Nick lies.

-

In the end, Nick convinces Harry to go see the catacombs with him, paying for their tour surreptitiously while Harry’s distracted by a placard that tells the history of the caves. He looks a bit sick already, and Nick can tell he’s reconsidering the whole thing, but Harry doesn’t say anything, so they follow a prat in a cloak down a flight of dark steps lit by lanterns. Twenty minutes into the tour, when Harry comes around a corner too quickly and finds himself staring into the empty eye sockets of a skull mounted on the wall right at face level, he starts to breathe heavily and shoves his sunglasses down onto his face, despite the fact that they’re underground.

Nick thinks it’s all rather fascinating, but by the time it’s through and they’re back above ground, he’s worried Harry may be halfway to an actual panic attack, given the shade of greenish-yellow he’s turning and the wheezy sound he’s making as he breathes.

“Should’ve done the Eiffel Tower instead, maybe,” Harry admits, a shudder creeping up his spine.

“Don’t be pathetic,” Nick says fondly, but he leads Harry to the Eiffel Tower anyway, and the look on Harry’s face when he stares up as they stand beneath it makes something all at once strange and familiar twist around in his stomach.

-

Harry’s still smiling like a maniac when they arrive back at the hostel that evening. “I love Paris,” he tells Nick firmly.

“It is lovely,” Nick agrees. He wrinkles his nose as he looks around the corridor of the hostel, though, amending the thought. Harry’s eyes follow Nick’s gaze to the grimy walls and dim light fixtures, and he pulls a face. “Er, well.” Harry rolls his eyes at him.

“I know what you’re thinking, so you don’t even need to bother and say it.”

“This place is going to give me nightmares,” Nick tells Harry, trying to sound dire. “Have you ever even heard of bedbugs?”

“It’s not that bad, don’t be dramatic.”

“I’ll have _nightmares_ ,” Nick repeats.

“This place is going to give you nightmares, but traipsing around in a huge underground bone cave was alright with you?” Harry asks incredulously.

Nick just shrugs. “There’s a difference between places of historical significance and foul hostels.”

“C’mere, let me show you something.” Harry’s grasping him by the wrist and yanking him before Nick can stop him, so he lets Harry lead him through a maze of dirty hallways and doors in various states of dilapidation. Through one he can see a shabby kitchen with three crusty looking teenagers sitting sullenly around a table, and through another is a lounge with a battered sofa that two people are snogging furiously on.

Harry navigates the shabby building confidently, like he’s known it all his life, and it makes Nick a bit dazed, the way Harry seems so sure of where they’re going. Nick’s long since lost his bearings in the twisting, dim hallways.

“Here,” Harry says, and then he unceremoniously shoves Nick through a set of double doors, out into a small garden.

It’s actually -- it’s beautiful, is Nick’s first thought, even though it’s totally incongruous with the dank building itself. It’s a tiny patio, but every surface is covered in ivy and creeping vines, tiny purple and yellow flowers turned up towards the small patch of sky above them. There are brick walls on every side, and it’s not more than a few feet across, but there’s a wooden bench off to one corner, and it’s lit by soft orange sodium lamps, and it’s lovely.

“This bit’s not so bad, is it?” Harry asks, twisting his legs underneath him to sit on the bench in a way that makes Nick’s hip ache sympathetically. He doesn’t think he was ever that twisty, even when he was nineteen.

“Not so bad, I s’pose.” Nick hates to admit it, liking something about this filthy hostel he’d fought so hard against, and swears he won’t ever acknowledge it again, even under extreme duress. But he thinks the way that Harry’s smiling, and the soft orange light, and the sounds of Paris off in the distance beyond the garden walls all add up to count as extenuating circumstances.

Harry smiles, and they stay out there until Nick’s eyes start to droop. By the time they fall into the uncomfortable little twin beds in their room, he’s too tired to be very outraged at all.

-

Paris in the day is much the same as it has been every time Nick’s visited, except it’s all new to Harry, and everything seems to dazzle him. It’s enough to make Nick feel like he’s seeing it all for the first time too, even though he’s been more times than he could possibly recall.

So he pulls Harry around to landmarks, bullies him into letting him pay to get them into the Louvre, although Harry protests for a good half hour beforehand. Harry thumbs through dusty old books in French he can’t read in the cramped booksellers stalls in the Marais, and knocks over a jar with a preserved cow’s heart floating in it in the medical oddities shop he finds, looking horrified and a bit giddy the whole time.

He tries to get Harry to let him buy them meals, proper fancy ones at restaurants with waitresses and what have you, but Harry refuses every time, so they share greasy chips in paper cones and cheap sandwiches on park benches or curbs. Nick picks out piles of pretentious, airy pastries and Harry will turn all but one of them down, pulling it apart gently to make it last.

Harry will let him buy them drinks at night, though -- or at least he’ll say that Nick can buy them each _one_ , but after one he’s easier to persuade into a second, and if he can get to a third, Harry forgets to protest at all, just smiles all loose in the way that Nick likes best.

“Take me somewhere you like,” Harry tells them the third night of their stay. He’s got a glob of jam smeared on his chin from the toast he’s eating -- he’d found the jam abandoned in the hostel’s foul kitchen, and Nick had tried to warn him about botulism and other concerns involved in eating it, but Harry had just smiled sweetly and carried on ignoring him, something he’s become disconcertingly good at lately. Nick tries to stop himself from feeling all soft and fond about it, and mostly fails.

“I like lots of places,” Nick says. “For instance, hotels that haven’t got roaches.”

“There aren’t any roaches here,” Harry says, but he glances around the floor of the kitchen just to be sure. There aren’t any _currently_ , at least not where Nick can see, but he’s not counting that as proof.

Nick decides on taking him to a bar he remembers going to several years ago, when he’d taken a drunken weekend holiday with Aimee and the bloke she’d been dating at the time. They’d ended up at a massive place that was literally underground, with soaring ceilings and old stone walls that must’ve been at least a century old, and the drinks had been cheap, and Nick had gotten off with a fit model who’d only spoken Dutch in the toilets. It’s one of his fonder memories.

And if Harry wants to go there, he can do that.

Harry gets spectacularly pissed, his smile going wider and wider across his face as he grins across the bar at Nick as the night wears on. There’s a terrible DJ but Harry pulls Nick onto the dance floor anyway, the sleeves of his black t-shirt rolled up to his shoulders, and the ink of his tattoos glows under the flashing lights that make Nick’s head spin.

When they stumble back through the Metro to their room, Harry’s still laughing and smiling, leaning up against Nick, and Nick’s not sure who’s supporting who, because he’s pissed as well, can barely keep his feet moving forward in a straight line. Harry collapses into Nick’s bed, and Nick doesn’t have the heart to move him, so he curls up around him, trying not to disturb him but eventually giving up when his spine twists around like a question mark as he tries to keep from jostling Harry. Eventually, they just end up mashed together, Harry’s hair nearly suffocating Nick to death. Nick finds that he doesn’t mind as much as he ought to.

-

“Where shall we go next?” Nick asks him on their fifth day in Paris. He’s stretched out on the bench in the garden behind the hostel, and Harry is perched on one of the armrests like a gargoyle.

“Next?” he asks, sounding genuinely baffled. “Aren’t we going home?”

Nick raises an eyebrow at him, doing his best to look disapproving. “ _Harry_. I told you I was taking you around Europe. Paris is only a teeny little bit of Europe, did you know?” He holds his thumb and finger close together to demonstrate, and Harry smirks and leans over to punch him in the arm.

“Really, though, this was more than enough,” Harry protests.

“This is really, honestly not up for discussion,” Nick says. He doesn’t say it, but the thought of going home already turns his stomach, because what’s there for either of them? Harry will worry even worse, about finding a new job (or two, or three), and how he’ll send money to his mum that month, and he won’t laugh nearly as much as he has for the last few days. And Nick hasn’t got anything pressing, only drinking and sleeping and drugs and avoiding calls from his own family, and that all suddenly seems so dismal that he can hardly stand it.

“Pick where you want to go or I’ll pick for you,” Nick says simply.

Harry frowns more and purses his lips, but eventually he says “Amsterdam’s not far, yeah?”

Nick shakes his head. “Want to see it?”

Harry doesn’t answer right away, like it might be a trick question that he wants to get right but suspects might be a trap, and Nick fights the urge to roll his eyes, because Harry just can’t let it be simple, which is sometimes endearing, but is presently making his life more difficult than it needs to be.

“I suppose,” Harry finally agrees slowly. “ _If_ you promise not to spend an exorbitant amount of money.”

“You’re ruining all my fun,” Nick pouts, but Harry shrugs.

“Those are my terms, take them or leave them.”

Nick takes them.

-

In Amsterdam, Nick surprises himself by thinking about kissing Harry in the Anne Frank museum. He’s horrified, because it’s inappropriate for so many reasons, and he spends the rest of their tour feeling panicked and sweaty, trying not to look too closely at Harry, because apparently he can’t be trusted with his own eyes.

But then he keeps thinking about kissing Harry when they look at Van Gogh’s sunflowers, and when they share a spliff in the park and Harry laughs so hard at an ugly pigeon that he nearly chokes to death on a chip. He thinks about kissing Harry in the little bedroom they rent from a tiny woman who must be at least ninety, and thinks about it at night when they traipse through the red light district, everything hazy with whiskey and beer and the smell of Harry’s shampoo just at Nick’s elbow all night.

He thinks they’d better leave Amsterdam before he does something foolish.

-

Harry shakes his head vehemently. “Italy’s out of the question.”

Nick just smiles at him. “No it’s not. Nothing’s actually out of the question unless you make it that way, y’know.”

Harry just frowns at that, like he’s got some smart response he's biting back, and stays quiet for long enough that Nick’s worried that he’s working up to something important and possibly devastating.

“My mum always--” Harry starts eventually, but then cuts himself off, frowning again.

“Yeah?” Nick asks.

“Nothing, just.” Harry shakes his head a little and then squares his shoulders, and he’s visibly _thinking_ so hard that it makes Nick’s own head swim. “Venice’ll be nice,” he finally says, and Nick wants to press it, wants to know what Harry had meant to say, because that wasn’t it, but he lets it drop.

“So can I buy us the train tickets?” Nick asks.

“If there’s no other way,” Harry says mysteriously, which makes Nick shake his head, but in the end he’s allowed to buy the tickets, on the condition that they’re not first class.

-

Unsurprisingly, the money that Harry allows Nick to spend once they do get to Italy doesn’t go far. Or at least, Nick isn’t surprised by this, and Harry shouldn’t be, but he is, just a little, and it starts to show when they arrive at their cheap, dismal hotel, grimy and worn out from the overnight train.

“You said we were going to Venice.”

Nick blinks and looks around the hotel room they’re in. “Yes? Haven’t we?”

“Isn’t Venice actually, like. On an island, and shit? Y’know. Canals, like?” He kicks half-heartedly at the dusty duvet that’s dangling sadly off the sagging mattress. Nick can tell he’s trying not to look as if he’s disappointed.

“It’s close enough,” Nick says. “You can basically see it all, anyway.” He points to the tiny balcony perched off their room that looks just big enough for two people to sit on if they angle their legs in a particular way. He thinks it might be a bit romantic, in it’s own shabby way. And you _can_ see the sea if you crane your neck around the building of flat that butts up next to their balcony.

Harry looks less than impressed, though, and he squinches up his face to peer out the window.

“You can see a brick wall and some knickers on a laundry line.”

“You’re the one with all the money rules,” Nick says irritably. “I’d have put us up in a nice hotel if you’d let me.” But Harry just scowls out the window, ignoring him. “Look, I’ll take you over tomorrow, yeah? Ride a proper gondola and you can have one of those terrible ice creams and maybe get shat on by a pigeon.” Nick flops down onto the bed, which turns out to be two singles shoved together and not a proper double bed at all. “But I’m fucking knackered right now, so just come here and have a rest, yeah?”

Harry looks like he’s considering, like he might find some better offer from the dingy bathroom or the telly perched on the wardrobe that looks like it’s from 1970 at the absolute latest, but eventually he sighs and relents, letting Nick yank him by the wrist so he collapses next to him. A cloud of dust billows up around them and gets caught in the light coming through the window.

“You have to buy me dinner,” Harry whines, but he curls in closer to Nick, and Nick’s half asleep even as he’s mumbling “Yeah, alright, whatever you like.”

-

“You wanted food, then?” Nick asks later, once they’ve both woken up well past sundown. They’ve slid out of their hotel, avoiding the surly man at the front desk who for some reason seemed to immediately dislike Nick on sight when they’d arrived, and now they’re walking without any destination beyond getting out of their dusty room.

“Er, I guess,” Harry says, and Nick can immediately sense his defenses going up slightly, because he knows Nick is going to try and spend more money on him, especially since he’d given him an inch earlier by insulting the crap room and asking for Nick to buy him supper.

“Am I allowed to feed you properly tonight?” Nick asks. “Or are we going to carry on our tradition of eating all our meals together on a sidewalk somewhere.”

“Mm,” Harry hedges, and Nick suspects he knows what Harry’s thinking. He’s thinking it would be nice to take the ferry over to Venice proper and find a cliched little restaurant with smoky walls and candles and tables that are too small and make themselves sick on wine and pasta -- and it _would_ be nice, only Harry’s pride won’t let him enjoy it all the way. Nick’s wearing him down, he knows it, and the unhappy face Harry had made at their dismal room this afternoon had only been a sign of that, but an actual fancy dinner might be pushing it.

“It’s alright, y’know,” Nick says carefully. “You’re allowed to, like. Enjoy yourself.”

Harry looks at him curiously, like he doesn’t know what Nick means by that, even though Nick suspects he does, that he knows exactly. “I know,” Harry says slowly. “I wouldn’t have come, otherwise?”

“But you’ve got all these, like, rules. We don’t have to have rules. You can waste my money, really, I don’t give a shit. I just -- you sort of deserve it, y’know?”

But Harry just shakes his head, as slowly as he talks, and the sad little look he has on his face breaks Nick’s heart more than a little.

“Okay,” Nick says, afraid to push it anymore. “Okay.”

They don’t cross the channel on the ferry. Instead they wander down the twisting roads away from their hotel in the direction that Nick sort of thinks might be towards the sea. There are loads of people, actually, more than Nick had thought there’d be, and they’re all dressed like total twats.

“Thought people in Italy were supposed to be fashionable, honestly,” he says in a voice that’s probably too loud, because a large man ahead of them turns to frown. He’d be embarrassed if he could bother to care, but Harry’s started laughing despite himself instead of looking contemplative and sad, so it doesn’t matter. “I’ve seen nicer jumpers on the woman who digs through the bins behind the Tesco, Christ, even she wouldn’t be caught dead in something that looks like the drapes in my nan’s lounge.”

“Stop it, that’s terrible,” Harry protests, still laughing. It’s charming, in a sort of way, how Harry feels responsible even for some swotty tourist, but he’s actually smiling again, and Nick thinks if he can keep him in a good enough mood, Harry might allow him to buy him something to eat at a place where they can actually sit down inside. At an actual table and everything.

“Anyway, I don’t think anyone’s ever said that Mestre is one of the fashion capitals of the world,” Harry continues, trying for something like respectable and noble, like he’d never _dream_ of insulting the fashion choices of a horde of tourists, but the way his eyes are crinkling up happily gives him away.

“Don’t defend these people, Harry, honestly, it’s unforgivable. Sandals with socks. I thought there was a law against that, surely?”

Harry just knocks his elbow into Nick’s ribs, and as he’s doing so he missteps and fumbles off a curb into the street, righting himself with a ridiculous pirouette-type move.

“So graceful,” Nick says, grinning.

Harry doesn’t respond, but his smiles sticks on his face. The streets are a bit crowded and the air is warm around them, smelling like salt and the ocean, and also chocolate and baking bread as they walk past shops. Harry won’t sit still inside a restaurant, but he lets Nick buy them sandwiches wrapped in paper and they eat them folded up on a bench that overlooks a square with a clocktower. It’s full of tourists and a crowd of street performers in face paint are soliciting money. Nick wants to hate it, but he can’t manage to feel anything besides sort of fond and warm and cozy. It’s a bit sickening, if he’s honest with himself, in a strange, lovely sort of way -- going all soft like this.

When Harry’s distracted by a man playing the violin, Nick buys a nice bottle of wine at a tiny corner market off the square. Harry frowns and tries to look put out, but Nick just hands him the bottle, still wrapped up in a paper bag, and they alternate pulls off it as they wander some more, further away from the noisy square and towards the ocean (Nick thinks, at least -- he’s pretty sure they’re going in the right direction).

They turn a corner and suddenly they’re stumbling onto a beach, a dark patch of sand between some closed-down tourist shops, and past it the waves rolling in foamy and low. Harry whoops and kicks off his shoes to run into it before Nick can figure out what he’s doing.

The little waves tangle up around Harry’s ankles and he kicks at the water, laughing like a mad person and soaking the bottom half of his trousers. Nick smiles, and feels strangely like everything’s gone huge, but shrunk down to just the two of them at the same time.

When Harry trudges back up the sand to Nick, he’s still grinning, and he pulls Nick down towards a wobbly little pier that juts out into the water. “C’mon, put your feet in with me,” Harry goads.

Nick kicks off his trainers and tries not to think about how all it takes is a word from Harry to get him to do so. They sit with their feet dangling into the dark water, and Harry leans against Nick’s shoulder, sighing happily. Farther out over the water lightning flashes, and several seconds later thunder rumbles low.

“Gonna storm,” Nick says idly as the waves kick up around their ankles.

“Mm, yeah,” Harry agrees, making no effort to move or stand up. So they sit as the wind gradually picks up and the water gets choppier, spraying salt up around their legs as the bursts of lightning move closer.

“C’mon, we ought to go,” Nick finally says when the clouds are almost directly on top of them Harry grumbles but stands to follow him, and as he does, a large wave crashes around the end of pier, spraying them both with a wall of salt water that soaks them both up to their necks, leaving Nick sputtering. Harry cackles helplessly, doubled over as Nick tries to shake the water out of his hair, and that’s when it finally starts to rain, warm and heavy, the drops pounding on the surface of the ocean as Harry keeps laughing.

-

In the tiny hotel room, Nick wrings his shirt out over the drain that’s meant to serve as a shower in the toilet, while simultaneously trying to peel off his soaked trousers.

“That was brilliant,” Harry says from the bedroom where he’s opening the windows. It’s still storming outside, but the air is warm, and the sound of the rain is somehow far more soothing than it ever is in London.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see if you’re still laughing when we catch pneumonia and die,” Nick says, smiling despite himself.

Harry pulls off his soaked t-shirt and tosses it over the railing on the windowsill. “Alright way to go,” he says happily, dragging one of the thin towels he’s found in a cupboard over his head. There’s another crack of thunder as lightning illuminates the room, lighting up the long lines of Harry’s bare torso.

“Hey,” Harry says, tossing down his towel and stepping over the worn carpet towards Nick.

“Hey back,” Nick says as Harry moves into his space, boxing him in against the wall.

“I liked this,” Harry says softly, like it’s a secret. “Today, I mean.”

“Well,” Nick says, shifting around. Harry’s very close, and it makes him feel unsure what to do with his hands. “Good.”

And then Harry’s leaning in and kissing Nick softly, once, and he doesn’t stop smiling the whole time.

He doesn’t say anything else, just turns away and climbs into the bed, but when Nick slides in beside him, Harry finds his hand and twists their fingers together, holding them for a moment before letting them go.

-

Nick wakes up to Harry’s face six inches from his own.

“Okay,” Harry says, like they’ve been in the middle of a conversation instead of asleep for the last seven hours.

“What?” Nick’s forgotten for a moment where they are, and it’s not until he gets a glimpse out the window to the balcony and sees the clothesline with all the knickers (soaked from the rain, now) that he remembers Venice, and the grimy room outside of it. The sky is gray, the storm’s apparently blown over, and when he finally gets clear-headed enough to look at the clock, it turns out to be only half six in the morning.

“Okay _what_?” Nick asks again, because Harry’s just staring at him, arranged carefully around Nick’s knees with a smile playing around his mouth. Nick can’t decide if it’s sweet or a little terrifying. “Haz, it’s not even bloody seven yet, tell me whatever or let me go back to sleep.”

“Okay your money.” Harry doesn’t look totally pleased, but he does look resolute, almost peaceful in the way he’s clearly decided what he wants. He shakes out his hair and keeps on looking at Nick. “You can, like. Spend it. If you want. I won’t fight you about it.”

“Oh thank God,” Nick murmurs, his head falling further back onto the abysmally flat, hard pillow. A distant part of him thinks it’s almost impressive that they’ve managed to make linen and feathers feel so much like a sackful of very thin, very uneven bricks. “Let me sleep for two -- three more hours, and then we’ll leave this terrible place and find an _actual_ hotel and get out of here.” The thought of it -- of a proper bed, and actual tea instead of just broken kettle, and a shower that’s really a shower and not just a spigot over a grate in the corner of the toilet -- is enough to lull him back to almost-sleep straight away, regardless of the horrible pillow situation.

“C’mere.” He yanks Harry bodily by the elbow so he’s forced to lie down, because it’s too early and no one should be up yet, in Nick’s opinion, not even mental teenagers. “Go back to sleep, it’s unnatural to be up before the sun.”

Harry lets himself be folded alongside Nick, fitting himself easily into the space around Nick’s knees and elbows. He smells soft and clean, not at all like the dusty hotel, and Nick’s breathing in hard before he can stop himself. The room might be crap, but it’s cozy like this, having Harry all close and warm and nice-smelling.

Harry says something quietly, later, right as Nick’s almost asleep again, but he doesn’t quite catch it.

-

Harry, admirably, doesn’t protest when Nick checks them into a posh hotel that afternoon that they can only get to by hired gondola, and only makes one quiet noise of disapproval when Nick orders a week’s worth of food to their room. Nick thinks he might break when Nick starts opening bottles of expensive wine from the minibar, even sees Harry open his mouth in what looks like a protest, but then a funny expression comes over Harry, and instead he just shakes his head and smiles.

-

Two days later, they miss their train to Spain.

“How do you feel about driving, then?” Nick asks, shaking the set of keys in his hand in front of Harry’s face. They’re stood in front of a car hire place near the train station, surrounded by shiny, ostentatious silver cars that look more that a bit expensive.

“Er. I can, if that’s what you’re asking?”

“Brilliant,” Nick says, grinning in a way that he thinks probably doesn’t look as reassuring as he means it to. “‘Cos I’m crap at it.”

Before Harry can react, Nick’s tossing the keys at him -- or at least in his general direction. Harry just stares at them as they arc through the air, catching the sunlight before clattering onto the dirt near Harry’s feet. He doesn’t make even a perfunctory move to catch them.

“Should I be as scared as I am?” he asks Nick warily. “You’ve got a very alarming expression.”

Nick just grins and opens the car door for him.

-

“Do you know how to ski?” Nick asks him suddenly. They’ve been driving silently along the gently snaking road for an hour, Harry behind the wheel and Nick propping his knees up against the dash as the hills roll by outside of the windows in a blur, occasionally pointing out which turns Harry should take when his mobile chirps instructions.

Harry makes a face at him. “Why,” he asks cautiously, squinting suspiciously against the reflection of the sun on the road.

“Idle curiosity,” Nick says, still gazing out at the towering mountains that are smudgy off in the distance. He presses a few buttons on his mobile, waiting for it to recalculate.

“Here, turn right,” he tells Harry several miles later when the road forks. Harry, to his credit, doesn’t ask where they’re going, only raises an eyebrow curiously.

-

“This is mad,” Harry says, doubled over on his skis in laughter.

“Have you hit your head? Should I call one of the medics over?” Nick says primly, shaking the arms of his borrowed coat out. It’s a bit short in the wrists, but he hadn’t thought to bring a winter parka in May, so it’ll have to do.

Harry just laughs harder until he has to sit down backwards in the snow with an audible _whoompf_ to save himself from going head over arse down the mountain.

“Are you almost done?” Nick asks. “Only I’ve hired a lovely woman to teach you how to ski, so maybe you ought to go, like, _do that_.”

“Skiing,” Harry cackles, still bent over at the waist as he sits in the snow. “It’s bloody _summer_.”

“Seasons are inconsequential when you're on a glacier in the Alps,” Nick says, hoping it sounds wiser than it comes out. He’d actually not known it was a thing you could do until he’d looked it up on his phone, but apparently you can, and it’s exactly the kind of nonsense, extravagant thing he’s wanted to do for Harry since they’d left London, so they’d driven to Zermatt instead of Barcelona. Nick thinks they might be taking the most haphazard, circuitous tour of Europe possible, but he can’t find it in himself to mind at all.

They’re staying in a little cabin they’ve rented up at the top of the glacier that’s done up in a proper ski lodge motif, all heavy-cut logs and a large stone fireplace and thick blankets thrown over the backs of chairs. It feels like it’s the middle of winter, like they’re somehow exempt from the standard rules of things like seasons and time just by way of being this high up in the mountains.

Nick has no interest in skiing, so he goes back to the cabin as Harry bumbles around on the slopes with a tiny little pixie of an instructor. He fixes himself tea, and pours a bit of whisky in it because it’s cold, and he can’t think of a reason not to. He briefly thinks about using the fireplace before realizing he doesn’t have the first idea how to build a fire, so he leaves it and takes a nap under three heavy quilts instead. When he wakes it’s snowing, and Harry’s bursting into the cabin, cheeks pink and hair spilling out from underneath his wool hat. He’s actually wearing _mittens_ , and the sight of it makes Nick want to laugh, so he does.

“Oi, don’t be rude,” Harry chides, but he’s laughing too, and then shucking off his coat and crawling up next to Nick on the sofa, pressing his icy fingers against the back of Nick’s neck. The shriek he makes, Nick maintains, is very dignified and manly.

-

They stay there for four more nights, because Harry thinks he might have a future as a professional skier, and Nick likes the way it feels there, like they’re in another world. And he’s fine with any excuse to drink whisky in his tea at half past three in the afternoon, as well.

Harry cooks them breakfast and dinner because the cabin’s got a proper kitchen, and he moves with a deftness that surprises Nick --- he hadn’t had any idea Harry could cook like that, but now that he’s seen it, it makes perfect sense.

“D’you know I don’t even like the cold?” Harry asks one afternoon, stirring a huge vat of something on the gleaming silver cooktop of the cabin. Nick thinks it’s a soup, and the notion of someone going on holiday and spending their time making their own complicated soup is so strange and endearing to him all at once that he has to force himself not to laugh.

Nick wraps the quilt tighter around himself instead, shuffling across the room to watch as Harry cooks. Whatever it is he’s doing, it smells brilliant.

“Why did you let me drag you up a bloody mountain, then?” Nick asks fondly.

“Didn’t think I could stop you,” Harry says. It’s probably true, Nick doesn’t think he would’ve let Harry talk him out of this, and especially not now, not when he’s seen Harry all done up in knit sweaters with his nose pink from the cold and snow in his hair from tumbling off the ski lift for the fourth time in one day.

“Alright, fair,” he admits.

“No, but, like, the point is --” Harry gestures broadly with the wooden spoon he’s wielding, and Nick takes a step back to avoid being hit in between the eyes with a rogue piece of carrot. “It’s nice here,” he says, “and it’s not the sort of place I thought I would’ve liked, so.” He shrugs.

“You do like it, though?” Nick asks, because even though Harry’s just said as much, he suddenly needs to be sure, needs Harry to say it again and again, because at it turns out, that’s all that Nick wants. He has no interest in skiing, but if Harry says he’s happy here, he’ll gladly consider skiing the best sport that man’s ever come up with.

“I do,” Harry says, and it comes out like a promise, filling up Nick’s chest with warmth even as the snow swirls outside.

-

When they do finally leave, Harry sighs a bit sadly, and Nick resolves to take him on a skiing trip every bloody year, two or three times even, if it makes Harry this happy, makes him smile this easily.

-

Harry gets sick in Vienna.

The hotel they’re in is old and regal, all tall ceilings with textured wallpaper, molding and woodwork everywhere, everything meant to communicate something rich and imposing and established. Nick thinks it’s the sort of place that’s supposed to intimidate you as a sort of ritual, to test if you actually belong there or not, which frankly bores him more than he can say, but it’s there, and it’s comfortable, and it’s better than a hostel, anyway.

He’s especially thankful they’re not somewhere rundown and dirty when he wakes up to hear Harry retching violently in the toilet. Nick sits up more quickly than he ought to, and from the bed he can see the door to the ensuite is cracked open just enough that he can see Harry’s bare spine, curled over like a question mark as he’s sick. Nick doesn’t remember deciding to do so, but he shoves off the blankets and wanders over to the doorway, leaning up against the ornate edging that frames it.

Harry turns his head at the noise and smiles weakly. He’s looks peaky, his face green where it’s not pale and covered with sweat. “I think, possibly, I might be ill,” he says, his voice coming out a dull croak.

“Really,” Nick says. “I’d never have guessed it.”

“Felt a bit off since breakfast, but I didn’t want to say,” Harry admits.

“Do you think you need a doctor?” Nick asks.

“Don’t be stupid,” Harry says, although the sentiment is undermined a bit when he starts coughing violently, which turns to more sick.

“Yeah, silly notion on my part,” Nick says, trying to roll his eyes in at least a somewhat pitying and empathetic way. “You’re the picture of health.”

“It’s just a bloody cold,” Harry protests, not bothering to lift his head out of the toilet. “ _Maybe_ the flu. M’fine.”

Nick doesn’t reply, but he does flinch as Harry’s sick again. He’d thought they might only stay another day, but Harry doesn’t look like he’ll be in any condition to go traipsing around anytime soon, and this seems as good a place to convalesce as anyway, so Nick slips out to the front desk as Harry vomits again and arranges for them to keep their room for the rest of the week.

When he gets back to the room, Harry’s dozed off with his head resting on the seat of the toilet, so Nick tries to pull him up as gently as possible and lead him over to the bed. Harry grumbles, but it’s mostly nonsense, and Nick suspects he’s asleep before he even lands on top of the duvet.

Dutifully, Nick pulls the sheets down and rolls Harry underneath them before smoothing them out and settling in next to him, searching for his phone and the remote to the telly. He thinks they might be there for a while.

-

“This place is haunted,” Harry tells him the next evening, before going into another coughing fit. He’s got the duvet pulled up around his head like a hood so all Nick can see is his face, flushed and sweaty even though the room’s on the wrong side of too cold.

“Yeah?” Nick asks, setting aside the crap spy novel he’d bought across the street at the newspaper stand in the interest of staying entertained while Harry’s bedridden. “How can you tell?”

“Too cold. But, like, too hot, too.” Harry frowns and stares past Nick’s shoulder into one of the corners that the lamp light doesn’t quite reach.

“‘S’that ghosts, then?” Nick asks, trying not to smile. “Thought it was just a rubbish radiator.”

“Ghosts,” Harry insists firmly. “Don’t like it. Won’t be able to sleep.” He squirms around pathetically as if to illustrate this, and only succeeds in tangling the sheets even more wildly around his legs. “Plus I saw one last night.”

“Oh yeah? What’d it look like?”

Harry smiles thinly. “Big tall git with a stupid quiff. Rather pale, even for a ghost.”

“Sounds like an alright sort of ghost to have around.”

“Be nice, I was traumatized,” Harry whines, and punctuates it with a yawn.

“Budge up, then,” Nick says, pushing himself out of the armchair and curling in next to Harry. He’s like a heater in the shape of a boy, radiating so much warmth that Nick doesn’t know how he can stand to be wrapped up like that, but when he throws an arm around Harry to pull him in closer, he feels him shiver.

“If I look out for ghosts, reckon you can get some sleep?” he asks.

“Mm,” Harry mumbles. He’s still staring at that same corner, but his eyes are drooping now. “Maybe if you keep watch. Properly, though.”

“Don’t worry, ‘m very vigilant,” Nick assures him. Harry nods as his eyes close, but Nick couldn’t say if he actually heard him or not.

-

Harry’s sick for four more days, stays in bed for all of them, and Nick stays with him too, only realizing afterward that it hadn’t even occurred to him that there’s no real reason for him to stay cooped up inside as well.

Still, he doesn’t regret it at all.

-

When Nick wakes up the fifth day after Harry gets ill, it’s because he’s making noises again, but this time he’s not coughing or being sick -- he’s talking low on his mobile, pressed into the furthest corner of the room.

“Everything’s fine, honestly,” he says low, shaking out his hair. “No, mum, stop, you don’t --”

Harry must notice Nick shifting around because he looks over at him, mouthing sorry, and Nick makes an apologetic face and goes into the toilet in an effort not to eavesdrop, busying himself with his hair for longer than strictly necessary.

Eventually he hears Harry say “bye” and figures he’s safe to come back into the room. “Your mum?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Harry sighs.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, s’fine, it’s just apparently Louis -- I didn’t mention to him where I was going, and I guess he got worried when he didn’t see me for so long, so he called my mum.” He looks a bit embarrassed, and kicks the heel of his foot awkwardly against the carpet.

“Oh,” Nick says. He hadn’t realized Harry hadn’t mentioned his leaving to anyone, and feels a bit guilty for making his friends and his mum worry, probably assuming he’d been murdered or kidnapped by human traffickers or something.

“S’fine now, she just asked if I was coming home soon.”

“Oh?” Nick asks carefully. “And -- you said?”

Harry smiles and shrugs on a jumper. “Eventually.”

-

Before they leave Vienna, Harry drags Nick around the city in a loop, claiming he wants to see something besides the insides of his own stomach before they leave. At the end of the day they end up in the gardens of the summer palace, Harry splayed out on the grass with his head near Nick’s knee as he gazes up at the gloriette on top of the hill.

“It’d be nice,” Harry says.

“Hm?” Nick’s not sure if there was a start to that sentence he just hadn’t heard, or if Harry’s doing the thing where he picks up in the middle of conversations that he hasn’t actually started yet.

“Not having to worry about it all so much,” Harry says. “It’s crap, having to try so hard and still feeling like you can’t even take care of yourself, let alone anyone else.” Harry’s voice is carefully level, and he doesn’t turn to look at Nick as he talks, staring up at the sky instead. “I just -- I always feel like I could be doing more, y’know. Should be sending more to mum and Gem, should have myself more together by now, all of that.” He shrugs. “Makes me feel like a sham sometimes.” He says it casually, but Nick knows better.

He thinks about telling Harry how he feels like a sham almost _all_ of the time, but it’s exactly the kind of thing he likes to keep to himself. Still, though, it’s _Harry_ , and Nick’s almost forgotten there’s anyone else in the world, so before he can stop himself, he hears himself start to speak.

“It’s the same for me,” he says. “I mean, I guess not the same, but.” He shrugs. “Feeling like I’m not doing enough, all that. Except in my case it’s actually true, like--” He doesn’t know how he means to finish that sentence, though, so he doesn’t, just looks carefully out over the hill, and the crowds of people milling around, carrying bags and picnics and babies. “It’s crap to act like having money is this terrible problem, though, so mostly I try to shut up about it. S’easier to just fill up your time with drinks and fit blokes, isn’t it?”

Harry twists his head around to stare at Nick, a strange look on his face. “Is that -- is that what I am?” he asks. “Like. A distraction?”

Nick shakes his head vehemently, because that’s not what he’d meant at all, hates to hear Harry say it. “You’re not. You’re my _mate_. Why d’you think I wanted to get us the fuck out of London so badly, anyway?”

“Felt sorry for me,” Harry says, brutally and simply honest.

“I don’t feel _sorry_ for you, Haz,” Nick says, jostling Harry with his knee to drive home the point. “You needed to get out of there. But so did I, yeah? ‘S’good for both of us, I think.”

“Alright,” says Harry softly, rearranging his hair and moving closer to Nick’s crossed legs. The afternoon is getting late, and they’ll have to leave the palace grounds soon -- the rest of the people around them are gradually making their way back to the gates -- but Nick’s not sure he’s ready to stand up, not sure where they should go next, until all of a sudden he knows.

“C’mon,” he says, climbing to his feet. “I know what we should do before we leave.”

-

When they find the fun park, Harry’s eyes light up. There’s calliope music being piped in from somewhere, and everything smells like fried dough.

“Brilliant,” Harry says, smiling at Nick, and Nick tries not to feel too pleased with himself.

Harry drags him on the massive Ferris wheel, even though the heights make Nick’s stomach turn, and then on the bumper cars and a jangly little metal roller coaster that makes Nick’s joints rattle painfully when it swoops around its sharp corners.

“No more, please,” he begs afterward. “I’ll be sick if you make me ride anything that spins, I swear. Can we just sit, maybe?” He know he sounds old and pathetic, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

Harry shakes his head. “M’gonna do that,” he says, pointing to the arch that’s rising up behind them. There’s a little cart that rests at the bottom, where an attendant is leaning against it smoking a cigarette, and a huge inflatable mat underneath with an ominous-looking X painted on its surface.

Nick laughs. “Yeah, alright. C’mon, I want candy floss before we go.”

“No, I’m serious,” Harry protests. “I’m gonna bungee jump.”

Nick looks at him blankly. “Harry,” he says. “You’re not. You’ll _die_ , that thing can’t be safe.”

Harry scoffs. “A twelve year old girl just did it and she didn’t die.”

“Well -- well that just makes it more likely that you will, statistically,” Nick says ridiculously. “Someone’s due.”

Harry rolls his eyes, looking equal parts fond and annoyed. “You wait here, alright? I’ll be back.” He points up at the arch, and before Nick can stop him, Harry’s darting off, shoving a handful of tickets to the man who stubs his cigarette out to count them.

Nick tries to pull his eyes away as Harry gets the cord -- essentially a rubber band, Nick tries to keep himself from thinking -- strapped around his ankle by a thick cuff, and is then led into the little cart that slowly starts to rattle it’s way to the apex.

When it clanks to a stop, Nick forces himself to look up, squinting to see Harry where he’s lit up by the sun that’s starting to set now, turning the clouds orange-red. Harry’s just a small smudge from down here, backlit against the sky, and Nick tries to force his stomach not to flip nervously.

Up above him, Harry raises his arm to wave, and Nick shakes his head faintly. The bloke next to Harry opens the door of the cart, gesturing a little to show Harry how to fall. Harry steps up to the edge, pausing for a beat, and then in the space between one moment and the next he’s falling head-first towards the ground, shouting wildly as he goes. Nick can’t look away, because his stomach has jumped into his throat and this is almost certainly going to be how Harry dies, but it’s also sort of beautiful, the way Harry’s stretching into a long line as he cuts through the air, a hoarse yell echoing out from him as he’s yanked back up, bouncing in silhouette against the setting sun.

Nick’s pulse is almost normal by the time Harry’s hauled down and unstrapped. He saunters back over to Nick, a little wobbly on his feet but grinning madly.

“You’re a maniac,” Nick tells him. “How was it?”

Harry just grins, so bright it takes over his whole face, and Nick finds himself smiling despite himself. “Unbelievable,” Harry says.

-

Back in their imposing hotel room that night for the last time, Harry sleeps with his head curled into the curve of Nick’s shoulder, and doesn’t wake once.

-

“Why’re we going to Germany?” Harry asks on the train the next day.

“Because it was the first thing on the ticket board and you wouldn’t suggest any place else?” Nick answers, fiddling with his mobile as the countryside whizzes past outside their compartment. “Anyway, I’ve been to Baden-Baden before, there’s a massive casino and I feel lucky.”

“Is that so,” Harry asks, and Nick just smiles at him and closes his eyes, keeps them closed until the train pulls into their station as the sun sets.

-

Nick doesn’t _mean_ to laugh at Harry, really. But they’re in the massive posh casino right in the heart of the city, and Harry wearing an oversized borrowed suit jacket because there’d been a dress code Nick hadn’t known about, and the put out expression on Harry’s face is too much -- Nick has to find a cocktail before they’re more than three steps inside just to occupy himself with something long enough to stop cackling.

“I’m glad you think this is so funny,” Harry says mutinously, plucking unhappily at the baggy sleeves that hang several inches too long, covering his knuckles. “I look like I’m _twelve_.”

“You don’t, Haz, I promise,” Nick says, and almost gets it out with a straight face before collapsing into laughter.

“Right, okay, I’m leaving,” Harry says, turning back towards the elaborate arch of the entrance.

“No, c’mon, I’m sorry,” Nick says, forcing himself not to laugh as he grabs Harry by the elbow. “C’mon, let’s find a game. We can play blackjack and pretend to be James Bond.”

“James Bond had a jacket that fit,” Harry says darkly, and Nick bites the inside of his cheek and focuses on his drink instead so that he doesn’t laugh again -- Harry’s so _sensitive_ sometimes, honestly.

“D’you even know how to play blackjack?” Harry asks as they cross the huge room. It’s jammed with posh looking people, wearing proper suits and evening gowns, and that makes Nick want to laugh too, because he knows they must look out of place -- for one thing, almost everyone else is at least two decades older than they are. He leans in closer to Harry, who’s at his elbow, not wanting to be pressed apart by the crowd.

“I’ve got the general idea,” he says, which is mostly true. Sort of.

-

Nick’s not pissed, but if they keep it up he will be -- he’s been amusing himself by playing a game where he takes a drink every time Harry loses at something, and he’s starting to think that might be a dangerous idea, because Harry is a terrible gambler. And really, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

“Alright, I’m done with this,” Harry declares as a dealer at a poker table rakes away another pile of lost money. Nick swallows his vodka tonic dutifully. “Can we go? That woman with the fur is looking at me again, and the thing she’s wearing has a face.” Harry grimaces.

“Alright, yeah,” Nick agrees. “Here, I dunno, just get rid of this.” He shoves his last handful of their gambling chips into Harry’s hands -- not enough for him to bother having it turned back into cash.

“How?” Harry asks.

“I dunno, put it on roulette or something.” He steers Harry towards a spot at an empty table near the front, shoving between two blokes smoking cigars. “You pick, I don’t care.”

Harry sets them down on 17, and turns to say something to Nick that he doesn’t quite hear over the clatter of the ball in the wheel and the general noise of the room.

“What?” he asks.

“What’re we doing tomorrow?” Harry repeats.

Nick shrugs. “Whatever you like, I suppose.” He fiddles with ones of the cuffs on his shirt and reaches for Harry, pressing his hand against the small of his back. “C’mon, I’m knackered.” He’s thinking about getting back to the hotel room they’ve rented down the road, and taking a shower and sleeping off the slight buzz he has going, and forgets they’ve even bet anything until the man on his right reaches over, offering his hand for Nick to shake. He glances down at it, and then at the man, and then down at the table, where the wheel has stopped moving.

“Oh,” says Nick, because he hadn’t expected that.

“What happened?” Harry asks, looking confused.

“Um. We won?” Nick says.

“Really?” Harry asks. “How much?”

“I think,” Nick starts, because he’s been drinking, and maths isn’t his best subject anyway, but he tries to work it out. “Something like, um. Seven thousand pounds?”

Harry’s jaw drops slightly.

-

“Listen,” Nick says as they cross the street back to their hotel, loosening the collar of his shirt. He shifts the bag of money uncomfortably between his hands -- he’d shoved it in a plastic bag from the shop in the lobby for lack of anywhere better to put it. “You should keep it.”

“What?” Harry asks, sounding genuinely shocked by the idea. “No, Nick, that’s your money, I really can’t--”

“You picked the number,” Nick protests. “It’s more yours than mine.” Harry looks at him warily, clearly uncomfortable, but it makes sense to Nick -- Harry should have this, and Nick can give it to him, and he decides he won’t let Harry say no. “Seriously, Haz, take it.” He passes the bag of money over to Harry, who looks at it like it’s a live snake.

“Nick,” Harry starts, sounding too sober and too serious. “I really -- I mean, I can’t take it.”

“Well, I’m not giving you a choice,” Nick says, hoping he sounds firm. “Alright? So don’t argue.”

Harry looks back and forth between Nick and the money for a long moment, still not looking convinced.

-

Harry’s quiet as they walk through the corridor to their hotel room, and in retrospect, that should have tipped Nick off. But he lets them into the room and Harry sheds his shirt and tie silently, eyebrows pulled down across his face in an unreadable expression.

“Alright?” Nick asks cautiously as Harry drops the bag of money. It slumps next to the wardrobe, and Harry glares at it like he’s trying to lift it with his mind or something. Nick shrugs, and turns his attention back to pulling off his own jacket and trousers.

He ought to be surprised when it happens -- a better person would be surprised, but Nick’s thought it might be coming, thought it was possible for a while now -- ever since Venice, actually. Still, he doesn’t quite expect it to happen the way it does. One moment he’s pulling his shirt over his head, and the next Harry’s got his hands on Nick’s face and he’s kissing him furiously, pressing him down onto the bed before Nick knows what’s happening.

“Oh _God_ ,” he moans into Harry’s mouth, trying to get a hand into his hair. Harry’s looming over him, and Nick suddenly can’t seem to make his hands work right.

“C’mon, yeah,” Harry says, trailing his mouth down the side of Nick’s neck, hands clawing aimlessly along the sides of Nick’s torso. He presses up against Nick desperately, still biting at his jaw and the tendons in his neck, and Nick’s head is swimming and he can’t tell if it’s a good sort of dizziness or not. When Harry pulls back for a moment to look at Nick, his face is pulled into a strange expression that makes Nick’s stomach lurch.

“Harry, wait--” Nick starts, not because he really wants Harry to _stop_ , but because it’s -- he’s not sure, but something seems wrong, something in Harry’s eyes is too sharp and off-kilter. He wants -- he _wants_ , desperately all of a sudden, but he needs Harry to stop all the same.

“C’mon, Nick, let me...” Harry trails off, trailing his thin fingers at the waistband of Nick’s pants, pushing them down a bit. His mouth is back at Nick’s neck again when he says it: “C’mon, I owe you.”

Something in Nick’s chest seizes up painfully, and he pulls away from Harry quickly, pressing him away at his chest. “What’d you say?”

Harry looks at him desperately, his expression pleading for something that Nick can’t quite read. “I just -- everything, all of this, and then the _money_ , and I just thought I should--” He stops, and drops further down the bed so he’s pressing his face against the front of Nick’s pants. He’s hard, and suddenly hates himself for it.

“This is -- no, Harry, get off.” Nick shoves Harry off to the side, trying to unravel their limbs. “Jesus, not because you think you _owe_ me or some shit.”

Harry pulls back to sit on his knees, his bare limbs making him look even paler and younger than usual in the weak light from the street that’s filtering in through the curtains. “But -- I mean, I _do_ ,” he starts.

Nick thinks he might be sick, now, and not from the drinks. “You _don’t_ , not like that, Jesus.” He pushes back further and sort of tumbles off the bed. He doesn’t know what else to do so he pulls his trousers back on and flails about looking for his shoes as he runs a hand through his hair, making it stick out madly. Harry doesn’t move from the bed, just seems to shrink further in on himself as he gazes at Nick, and he has to look down the floor, look anywhere else besides at Harry. He looks so young and so sad and if Nick stays in this room for another second, he’ll be sick or scream, because it turns out he wants Harry desperately for himself, more fiercely than he’d had any notion he was capable of, but it absolutely can’t happen if Harry thinks -- if it’s like _this_.

“Nick,” Harry says, his voice thrown low. He sounds torn apart and miserable and Nick knows he can’t curl him into his chest and pet his hair like he wants to, so he doesn’t let himself look back as he feels for the door in the dark, and then slides quietly into the orange glow of the hall.

-

Nick drinks three and a half whisky Cokes at the hotel bar before he thinks he can go back to the room and face Harry.

Except when he gets there, Harry’s gone.

Nick circles the lobby three times looking for him before he steps outside. The air is still warm, and there are people trailing back from the casino, and he hasn’t got any idea where he ought to go, so he just starts going, and hopes it’s right.

He finds Harry thirty seconds later, curled up in a bench tucked into an alcove off the side of the hotel where a row of porticos lead through a garden and down to the street.

“Hi,” Harry says miserably when Nick looms over him.

“ _Jesus_ , you twat, don’t do that,” Nick says, and it comes out harsher than he means it to, but all of a sudden he realizes how unsettling it had been not to know where Harry had gone off to, regardless of the fact that he’d been less than 100 feet away the whole time. “Don’t run off.”

“Didn’t know where to go,” Harry explains flatly. “Thought I might get lost.”

Nick sighs, and shoves in next to Harry on the bench. “You would’ve, too,” he says quietly. “No sense of direction.” He doesn’t know what to say next, so he says nothing, and they sit there silently until Harry finally speaks.

“Let’s go,” he says softly, sounding sad and quiet. Nick follows several steps behind him as they pass back through the lobby, and inside the room, Harry doesn’t turn to look at him, just curls up on the farthest side of one of the beds and faces the wall.

-

Harry spends the next day ignoring him, staying in his bed pretending to be asleep until almost noon, and when he finally opens his eyes, he won’t look at Nick, instead pulling out his mobile and occupying himself conspicuously on it. Nick tries to go about his business normally -- maybe if he pretends that nothing’s wrong it’ll all just sort itself out somehow, but eventually he has to lock himself in the shower for forty minutes, just to try and clear his head.

When he comes out, Harry’s pretending to be asleep again, and stays that way for two more hours.

-

“Look, do you fancy a walk or something?” Nick finally asks. It’s going on seven and Harry still hasn’t looked at him, and the tension in the room is going to make him lose his mind at any moment now.

Harry doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Nick thinks that maybe he won’t answer at all, maybe he’ll keep ignoring Nick until they get back to London, and oh god, Nick’s really cocked it up this time.

“Alright,” Harry says finally, voice creaky and quiet, and Nick exhales with relief.

“We could, um. Coffee? D’you want to get coffee?” Nick winces, hating how stilted he sounds, because this is _Harry_ , nothing should be weird between them, but all of a sudden it is, and he can’t work out how to get it back to normal.

“Coffee would be good,” Harry agrees cautiously. He presses himself out of his bed and rummages around in his bag for jeans and a t-shirt, and Nick busies himself looking for his phone and wallet while Harry dresses, his back to Nick.

Outside, he leads them down the main street until they find a cafe. “This okay?” Nick asks, gesturing, and Harry just nods, following Nick inside to sit at a table in one of the furthest corners of the wood-paneled room.

“So,” Nick starts, sipping at his coffee. “Should we, um. Talk?”

Harry wraps his long fingers around his mug and sighs, and the sad droop of his eyes almost breaks Nick’s heart. “M’sorry,” he says miserably. “For all of it.”

“Okay,” says Nick, breathing out heavily. He’s so massively unqualified to deal with this, but he suspects he owes it to Harry to get it sorted. “Sorry for -- um, kissing me, you mean?”

“I mean -- no, but yes?” Harry says, looking miserable and bewildered. “Like, I wanted to. Sort of have for, like. Ages.” He scratches at a chip on the rim of his mug, looking down. “But that was rubbish, obviously.”

“Yeah,” Nick agrees. “You can’t just try to fuck me because you feel obligated.”

“I don’t feel _obligated_ ,” Harry protests, but Nick just pulls a face at him. “I mean, like, I want... you, like that,” Harry continues, going a bit pink in the face. “Regardless. But then all the money, and just _everything_ , and I was all mixed up, and. I dunno. M’just sorry. I’ve fucked it up properly.”

Nick doesn’t want to agree because he can’t stand to think that Harry’s going to wrack himself with guilt over this, especially since he already carries more than his fair share of it at all times. He wants -- he desperately wants to reassure Harry. He’s not completely sure of what, or how, but he knows he can’t stand to see Harry look like that for another second.

“Look,” he starts, not sure what he’s going to say even though he’s started to say it already. “Just. Sod all of it, alright?” Harry turns to look at him and his face is so open that Nick thinks he may scream if this goes poorly, but it’s all he can think of. “Sod the money, and sod Europre, and just, sod everything. It’s just me, alright?”

“Okay,” Harry agrees slowly, biting down on his lip and frowning. “Then, like. Can I --”

Nick nods, and then Harry’s leaning across the table, almost knocking over both their mugs as he kisses Nick, his lips gentle and unsure on Nick’s. It’s nothing like it was before, but then Harry goes soft, relaxing into Nick, and Nick thinks he might have gotten it right this time despite himself.

“So. That’s alright, yeah?” he asks when he pulls back.

Harry nods at him, looking up at him through his eyelashes.

“D’you want to go back to the hotel?” Nick asks carefully, standing up from the cramped table. “Just, to like, talk,” he clarifies, but Harry nods, so Nick offers out his hand to help him stand, and refuses to let Harry drop it as they walk back to their room.

-

Harry curls up on the bed with his legs crossed when they get back to the room, and Nick follows, folding himself down so he’s sitting across from him.

“Why are you _doing_ this all for me?” Harry asks abruptly, and the voice it comes out in could break Nick apart. He sounds so _confused_ , so utterly at a loss as to why Nick wants to make him be happy, full stop, without any sort of motive, even though that’s how it is. There’s no qualifier, no terms to the way he wants to please Harry, he realizes -- it just is.

“‘Cos it’s you,” Nick says, because that’s the only answer he can think of. “I want to. That’s all.”

“I just,” Harry starts, pulling both of his hands through his hair so it sticks up madly. “I’m no good at this.”

“Have you noticed,” Nick says slowly, “that I’m also no good at this? I have no idea what I’m doing. That’s pretty clear, I think.”

Harry smiles at him weakly at that, and lets his arms drop heavily to his side. “So neither of us know what we’re doing, then.”

“Not a clue,” Nick agrees. “Alright, but -- hold on.” He pulls the bag with the money they’d won off the floor and sets it on the bed between the two of them. “Give it back to me.”

Harry frowns and smiles at the same time, somehow. “It’s your money already.”

“But I gave it to you.”

“And I turned it down, so.”

“Look, it’s the gesture, alright?” Nick asks, hoping that he doesn’t sound like he’s begging, but if that’s what he has to do to get Harry to understand him, then alright. “I shouldn’t’ve -- I want you to have it, obviously, but not if you think I’m trying to, like... _buy_ you or something. So, like, give it back. Officially.”

They sit facing each other, cross-legged on top of the duvet, the plastic sack full of Euros between them. Nick can practically _feel_ Harry thinking, spinning himself into tight little knots over everything, and he wants to say something else, something wise and witty and perfect to set everything right, but he doesn’t trust himself, so he keeps his mouth clamped shut.

Harry finally shifts, shoulders relaxing an inch, and looks at Nick. “So if you’re not trying to buy me,” he says, smiling in a small way that Nick’s not sure how to read, “what’re you trying to do?”

Nick squirms, wanting to make a joke to diffuse the tension he feels, but instead he forces himself to think about it long enough to sort out his words and give a proper answer.

“To make you happy,” he starts finally, not entirely sure if he’s getting it right, but figuring he ought to try. “You never let yourself just be happy.”

Harry smiles fully at that, the tension going fully out of him, and he shoves at Nick’s folded knee. “You do make me happy, you twat, but not because you give me money, or buy me things, or take me all across bloody Europe.”

“Yeah, alright, but.” Nick frowns, not sure if he likes what he’s about to say.

“But,” Harry repeats.

“I see you, like, working till you’re mad and exhausted and not having a proper place to stay or knowing if you’ll have enough money to send your mum and your sister, or being able to take a holiday, and, like. I dunno. I can give you that stuff, even if I’m no good at everything else.”

“Nick,” Harry says softly. “That’s the stupidest bloody thing you’ve ever said.”

Nick opens his mouth to protest, but Harry cuts him off and continues.

“No, honestly, Nick. It’s nice that you want to do all that, really, but you’re funny and clever and you do things like find strangers at three in the morning when they’re having a tantrum and eat kebabs on the street with them to cheer them up. That’s what you do for me that I like. That’s why I like _you_.”

 _Oh_ , Nick thinks, and then when he can’t think of anything else, says it too. “Oh.”

“Yeah. And maybe I’ve been an arsehole about not letting you help me with money, but, like. I don’t want you to think you have to bribe me to hang around you. And I don’t want to feel like I _owe_ you, because obviously that makes me act like a twat.” He flushes a little at the last part, looking embarrassed.

“But if I can help, I want to,” Nick says. “Not, like, because I’m trying to _bribe_ you, or make you my rent boy or something. But if I can at least make things a bit easier for you, and sometimes do nice things like take you on holiday and out for proper meals for no reason, you should let me, yeah? You won’t owe me. ‘S’nothing wrong with that.”

“S’pose not,” Harry says, although he doesn’t sound like he entirely agrees. “Just... go easy on me, I guess? I’d feel like shite if you went out and bought me, like, a car or something.”

“Alright, so no cars.”

“And probably no more sacks of money, either,” Harry says, nudging the bag between them.

“What do you reckon we should do with that, then?” Nick asks.

Harry shrugs. “Don’t wanna keep it.”

“Well, I don’t either.”

“I guess we could, um. Give it to someone? Might make someone less mental than us happy, at least.”

“If that’s what you want,” Nick agrees, finding that he means it -- he doesn’t care what happens to the money now so long as Harry’s pleased with the outcome and doesn’t come away from it thinking Nick’s a twat.

“We could, um. Spend just a bit of it ourselves first, though,” Harry suggests, glancing down like the very act of saying the words out loud embarrasses him.

“Yeah?” Nick asks.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, nodding more firmly. “It’d be alright this once, I suppose.”

-

Nick takes Harry out to dinner at a restaurant with tiny tables, so small their knees knock together the whole time. The food is tiny and delicious and comes in seven courses, and if Harry feels guilty about it, he doesn’t say so once.

Halfway through the meal Harry wraps his long fingers around Nick’s wrist, gently, and leaves them there until they leave.

-

The next day they rent a private room in the unbearably posh spa next door to the casino and get massages and sit in the saunas until they’re wrinkly and Harry’s curls fall loose over his eyes. In the great huge heated pool under a stained glass dome, Nick presses kisses against Harry’s throat, and works his hand slowly up his thigh, trailing his fingers over his half-hard cock until Harry groans, head tipped back against the tile.

In their private change room, Harry shoves Nick against the overstuffed sofa, pressing his robe away and then kissing him once, chastely, on the lips.

“This is okay?” Nick asks softly.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, nodding sweetly before dropping down to his knees.

-

The next day Harry lets Nick order room service and they eat terrible hamburgers and chips in bed, getting the spare sheet that Harry had thrown down over the duvet all greasy.

“Feel like we could do better in terms of luxury than soggy chips,” Nick says, but Harry just smiles and quirks an eyebrow and shoves a handful into his mouth.

When they’re done Harry shoves their plates off the bed, and pulls Nick flush against his chest before throwing all the blankets over them so they’re hidden underneath like it’s their own little cave. The white linen shuts everything out so it’s just Harry, just Harry’s face that Nick can see, just Harry’s fingers on Nick’s waist, just Harry surrounding him.

“This is enough,” Harry tells him firmly, like he’s adamant that Nick believe him. “Everything else is nice, but this is enough.”

-

“Europe’s lovely,” Harry muses quietly. They’re sat up on a hill in one of the public gardens just past the casino, shoved up against each other on a little patch of grass that overlooks a small lake as the sun dips low in the sky. “But y’know what I’ve always wanted to see?”

Nick shakes his head, and Harry smiles, ducking his head before answering. “America.”

“I’ll take you, then,” Nick says, moving in closer to Harry. Sometimes it feels like if he lets too much distance get between them, Harry might disappear. “And where will we go after that, do you think?”

“Mm. Africa, I suspect. Go on safari. And then to Brazil, or maybe Russia.”

“Sure, okay,” Nick agrees. “And then?”

Harry squints off towards the lake, the lampposts flicking on and reflecting back on the surface. “North Pole. See the Northern Lights. And Santa.”

“Bit far. And you don’t even like the cold.”

“Reckon it’d be worth it, though.”

They stay there until Nick’s legs begin to cramp up and he has to stretch them out, trying to get the feeling back all the way. He thinks it might not be at all bad to stay like this for a very long time, all still and warm and quiet, Harry’s hand tangled up around his, the sharp edge of his thumb dragging slowly over the bone of Nick’s wrist.

“After that?” he asks eventually. “After the North Pole?”

“Dunno yet,” Harry admits. He lets go of Nick’s hand and curls himself up so his long legs are tucked underneath him, twisting to face Nick and then leans in, curling his hand around Nick’s jaw.

Nick leans in and kisses Harry, soft and quiet in the dark, Harry’s long fingers still gentle on Nick’s face. It feels easy like nothing has for a very long time.

“First, though,” Harry says when he pulls away, still kneeling and pressed up against Nick. “First let’s go home.”

“Yeah, alright,” Nick agrees, because he thinks Harry’s right, it’s probably time for them to go back. He misses it a bit, London and his flat and all. He’s bringing Harry with him, though, properly -- Nick’s determined not to let him go back to sleeping on Louis’ floor, or worse.

“Stay with me, yeah?” he asks, hoping Harry knows what he means by it.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, smiling.

“Alright,” says Nick. He presses his fingers into the tops of Harry’s thighs like he’s trying to hold him down, keep him there with him so he can’t slip away. “Let’s go home.”

-

Before they leave their hotel, Harry shoves the plastic bag full of the money from the casino the back of the wardrobe, and then scrawls a note on a scrap of paper that he leaves on top of it that says “maids -- keep it :)”

When he shuts the door to the wardrobe, he looks like a weight has lifted off him.

-

Harry falls asleep before their plane even begins to taxi on the runway the next day, his head resting on Nick’s shoulder for the whole flight. Nick sits very still the whole time, trying not to move too much, not wanting to disturb Harry, or the way he’s got his mouth open, the way his whole face goes slack and sweet and young when he sleeps. He’s not sure what to do with all the fondness he feels for Harry -- it’s unsettling, or at least it should be, would have been in any other situation, only right now Nick can’t find it anywhere inside himself to be anxious or afraid.

The sky is dark and overcast as they take off, until suddenly they’re through the clouds and it’s not anymore.

-

When they arrive back at Nick’s flat, Harry dumps his bag in the front hall, and Nick does the same, finding himself a bit unsure what comes next.

His flat looks the same, the same wood floors and tall windows and spare jumper thrown over the kitchen table, forgotten there before they’d left. It feels like they just left and like they’ve been gone for a year all at once. He opens all the windows to let in the air and then sets about unpacking his bag and taking a shower, wanting to get the feel of the plane’s recirculated air off his skin.

“I called Louis,” Harry says when Nick comes back into the kitchen afterward, wearing trackies and a hoodie, his hair flopping damply into his eyes. “To apologize for pissing off and scaring him. He, um. Says he might have someone who can give me a job at their cafe.”

“That’d be brilliant,” Nick says, pulling Harry in close and settling his hands at his waist. Harry fits up against him easily, and Nick sighs softly at it. He’s exhausted, suddenly, like the fatigue of all their traveling has just set into him all at once, and he thinks he might be able to sleep for days, so he makes for his bedroom, positively aching for his own bed all of a sudden. Harry follows him and peels off his own shirt and trousers before molding himself around Nick’s back, pressing his mouth against the back of his neck.

“It’d be a start, at least.”

-

“I’ve still got some stuff at Zayn’s,” Harry says the next day, and Nick just nods, putting aside the tea he was making and carefully setting his hands on the counter next to the cooktop, rearranging the way a discarded spoon lines up against it. He wonders if this is the part where Harry decides that now that they’re back in London and everything’s less distant and hazy than it had been while they were away, now that it’s all more real, he might change his mind. Maybe he’s decided that he doesn’t want to stay in Nick’s flat -- maybe he’ll go back to Zayn’s or Louis’ after all, or somewhere else entirely. They’ll go back to spending their afternoons getting pissed in dim pubs like nothing has changed, and Nick will have to pretend not to be heartbroken over it.

“So can we get a taxi to go get it this afternoon?” Harry asks. “I think there’s a lamp and I don’t fancy taking it on the tube.”

Nick breathes in relief, possibly too conspicuously, but he can’t help it. “‘Course, yeah.”

Harry makes a strange little face at Nick, something between amused and perplexed and reluctantly fond, and Nick has the strong suspicion that he can tell exactly what Nick was thinking. If he does, though, he doesn’t say, just says “C’mere” and steps forward to wrap his long limbs around Nick like an octopus in black skinnies and a stupid knit hat even though it’s summer, fitting his head under Nick’s chin.

In the end, Harry piles several of his boxes into the spare room that he’d always refused to sleep in. But at night, he curls up next to Nick.

-

He does get the job at the cafe after all, and turns out to adore it, loves his coworkers (particularly Niall, who’s Irish, and Liam, apparently Louis’ mate who’d offered Harry the job in the first place) and the mismatched mugs and the dreadful sad music they play over the stereo all day long.

“It’s not permanent, obviously, but it’s great for now,” he tells Nick with a small smile. “And, erm, I was thinking if it goes well, I might be able to start school again eventually? They said they don’t mind working with student’s schedules, so...”

Something warm and soft blooms inside Nick, and it’s not until after he’s talked Harry into letting Nick take him out for dinner and drinks to celebrate that he realizes exactly it what it is.

-

Pixie’s friend Jasmine ends up offering Nick some job or another, something about being an assistant at some swotty-sounding arts project. He turns it down, because it sounds like more of the same, the same vapid people paying him for nothing real, and he’s still not interested in it, but that night he asks Harry if he thinks he’s done the right thing.

“Maybe I ought to just suck it up and at least _pretend_ to be a worthwhile contributor to society, y’know?” he asks, slumped over in a kitchen chair as Harry chops something for their dinner.

“Well,” says Harry reasonably. “D’you _want_ to go be an arts assistant, or whatever it was?”

“Not even slightly,” Nick admits.

“So what do you want to do instead?” Harry asks, skillfully transferring something from one pan to another as he speaks.

“Dunno,” Nick says, because that’s always been the question, hasn’t it? “What do you think I should do?”

Harry looks at him carefully, and then walks away from the cooktop and comes to rest his chin on Nick’s shoulder. “Whatever you like in the world.”

-

“‘S’been nice having you stay here,” Nick muses into Harry’s hair. They’re curled up on the sofa, Nick idly flicking through his phone while Harry watches a rerun of Nigella. Henry wants him to come get pissed at some club that’s apparently got the theme of “glitter,” but it sounds like it would require Nick getting very drunk to find it tolerable, and he’d rather stay in with Harry and _not_ get fucked up, which in itself is sort of novel.

“Mm,” Harry agrees, twisting around so he’s looking up at Nick from upside down, his curls flopping uselessly around his head. Nick imagines this isn’t a very flattering angle for his chin, but he still doesn’t feel inclined to move. “Except I’m not really _staying_ here, am I?”

“You’re not?” Nick asks. There’s worn-out paperbacks shoved into all of Nick’s bookcases, a startling array of product for curly hair littering all the surfaces in the bathroom, and at least seven sorts of produce in the refrigerator that Nick doesn’t know the names of to challenge that claim, that put together paint a very clear image of Harry’s extended presence.

“I _live_ here, idiot,” Harry smiles up at him. He curls his bare toes around Nick’s ankles tight enough to pinch, and doesn’t stop smiling.

“Is there a difference?”

“A massive one, yeah,” Harry informs him, nodding even though his head’s still upside down.

“Hm,” Nick says, considering this. He’s pretty sure he understands what Harry means, but he thinks he wants to be sure. “You’ll have to tell me about it sometime, then.”

“Sure,” Harry says. “Shut up while she chops this, though, I love this bit.”

So Nick shuts up, and turns off his mobile and pulls Harry closer and falls asleep to Nigella doing something inhumane to a radish. When he wakes up it’s to Harry pulling him up by the wrist. He mumbles something about taking Harry out to breakfast the next morning as they flop down into bed, but he’s half asleep again by the time Harry’s saying “Nah, don’t worry about.”

The next time he wakes it’s to Harry singing loudly and off-key in the kitchen, sunlight coming in where Harry’s left the drapes open again. Nick can smell Harry frying up eggs and bacon, and the crap coffee that Harry insists is just as good at the gourmet sort Nick used to buy is brewing in Nick’s preposterously complicated coffee maker, the one with rows of unmarked silver buttons down the side. Nick’s never been able to figure all its settings out, still not exactly sure how it works, but it does all the same.


End file.
